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Sunday, February 05, 2006

Countdown to the Olympics!

I took this picture while down on Commercial Drive in Vancouver today. I just thought the graphics were kind of vintage and interesting.

The reason I was down on "The Drive" is because Friday, February 10th is the opening ceremonies of the Torino Olympics. Anyone who knows me well knows everything in my life stops for the Olympics. I love the Olympics. It doesn't matter to me whether they are the summer or winter version. I don't care, although the winter version has more events I adore. Anyway, seeing as Torino will be hosting, I decided that it would be fun to serve an autentic Italian dinner. (I was inspired by my friend Kristi.) Where better to shop for ingredients, than in "little Italy" which is essentially Commercial Drive?

So what are we having? Well we went to The First Raveoli Shop and bought...raveoli! We got three cheese and cheddar and garlic. We also got some mildly spicy Italian sausage, some huge green olives, a box of mocha ice wafer style cookies and a lemon cake. There was this beautiful bakery down the street where we bought two loaves of cheese and roasted garlic bread. We didn't manage to find a store selling a case of Italian sodas or a gelato place that was open, but there are a couple of Italian delis and a gelato place close to home where I think I can find some. I also plan to make pickled asperagus wrapped in prochutto (Don't even ask me if I spelled that right!) as an appetizer.

While down on The Drive, I also came across a cool store called Terra Del Sol. They had a ton of Dias de los Muertos and Frieda stuff in the window and I want to go back when they are open. (The owners are away on business right now.)

Vancouver is such a great city. I love that people come here from all over the world and enrich our country with their culture, food, music, art and traditions. It makes things so much more interesting when you can learn how other people live. I didn't grow up here so I had never walked Commercial Drive before. It was really interesting and the people were very friendly and helpful.

Anyway, I am now really looking forward to our dinner Friday night! Italian dinner and the Olympics-it doesn't get any better than that!!

I'm looking forward to the Olympics too. I'm also hoping to sit there with my sketchbook for this one. I did some interesting movement gesture sbstractions the last time I watched figure skating and was wondering what visual impressions I could get from the whole run.